


urban legends

by wintercourse



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (in the past), F/F, Implied/Referenced Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-11 23:35:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5645899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercourse/pseuds/wintercourse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I hate you?”</p><p>It doesn’t sound nearly as convincing as it did in your head. She pulls back smiling, hair catching on the twice tagged brick.</p><p>“Bzzzz. Try again.”<br/><br/>Vriska and Terezi star in a not-quite-humanstuck in the big city; featuring messy quadrants, minimum wage, and mild political unrest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	urban legends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [condesqe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/condesqe/gifts).



> i loved this prompt, which was for "some type of au centred around vriska, terezi, a city, and their heartbreaking, messy, codependent relationship", so hopefully i did it justice!

If you were ever good at one thing, it was telling stories.

That’s what Terezi tells you – emphasizing the _one thing_ , flicking at your nose.

Not in a traditional sense – your vocabulary’s nothing to shout about, you interrupt yourself too much, and apparently your interests run a little lewd for some people. Apparently.

But when you point to the graffitied corner of the subway carriage, ask her if the ballad of _My Smashed Friend And An Unfortunate Stain_ counts as a good story, she says yeah, it does. She jabs a finger on the half peeled faded city map next to you, asks if you’ve heard the one about the cryptid living in the station’s sewers.

You say no, you haven’t, and she tells you to look the fuck around – there’s plenty more where that came from.

-

The streetlight pours, orange and inoffensive, through the dirty front window. There’s only been one or two customers over the course of your shift – the graveyard one by human standards. You don’t get how Terezi survives out here, so far from the nearest troll sector, sleep cycle the exact opposite of all her neighbours. She doesn’t come up your way so much, not anymore, and she just ignores you when you rail on how creepy human neighbourhoods are. Everything’s near deserted at night, and bustling during the day – eerie as rustblood ghost stories.

You tell her as much, and her voice pours tinny out of the phone held to your ear. She picks up the thread, tells you to consider the setting of your real life horrorterror movie.

“A quiet night, on the outskirts of the city…”

You’re miles out from the busiest blocks and blocks before the industrial district, where the river keeps its chokehold wrapped around the slate grey plots of land – a grungy outlet mall, and a shitty convenience store, more grime than glass on a good day.

(It’s a niche market – you think it’s pretty fucking stupid toting horn wax and shitty Alternian retro rags in a human borough, all things considered. But what sells sells, and what pays pays, even if it leaves you restocking nook worms and jars of prescription ‘mones in an elaborate little pyramid that the acne-ridden teen du jour will have knocked over by nine.)

You grab a magazine off the counter, and guess she hears the rustle in the otherwise dead silence.

“The protagonist flips a creased page, stares down at the dead eyed model–“

“–only a coat of gloss, cloud of cheap ass cologne and month’s worth of tacky thumbprints breaking their gaze.”

She cackles when you cut her off, and you let yourself grin into the mouthpiece. She quickly stifles her laughter and continues, in her lowest, creakiest voice.

“She’s on edge, but doesn’t know why – it’s only midnight! Every self respecting nocturnal troll knows true horrors dwell only in the harsh light of day, and fear the comfort of darkness.”

Your roll your eyes, glance out at the empty street.

“Man, you act like you’ve never seen a nighttime slasher flick. It’s been done.”

“Yeah,” and she’s laughing again, which definitely ruins the atmosphere, “but aren’t they the scariest ones? Stuff can hide in the dark, Serket. Maybe the humans are onto something!”

You toss the magazine aside. It’s three am, and you want to get home before dawn.

-

You’re three blocks out from your hive complex when the thumping starts, two when the shrieks begin to filter through the blaring traffic. Soon the crowd materializes, fast enough that they could have sprouted from the cracked paving. You’re starting to suspect that Condy likes throwing up these thirty deep troll roadblocks to inconvenience you, specifically – this is the third conference in front of your place in as many months.

You can hardly hear her speech over the music, blaring loud and guttural out of hot pink amps stacked two trolls tall. The beat is low to the point of inaudible, rattling through you – picked up through the soles of your shoes and passed along your skeleton like a whisper game. It’s familiar, off beat by a fraction you feel like you’ve heard before, even as you register how disconcerting it is. You blame your upset stomach on the sight of the candidate herself between flashes of crowd goers.

The mass of hair and horns in front of you gleams in gold and set fuschia, and even as you steamroll through the crowd, you roll your eyes. Most pinkies are all about tradition, clinging to any scrap of prestige their blood still gives them and wearing it as proud and obnoxiously as possible. Your old roommate was somewhere on the frigid end too, which helped the two of you get by in the stink of summer when your cooling was shot. You never knew or asked exactly how pink she was, but you wouldn’t put her anywhere near Condy – she was dating a rustblood for fuck’s sake. You miss her, sometimes, when you let yourself. Always smiling, trading barbs without missing a beat. You don't miss her friends, though - tin foil hat types, constantly raving about aliens as if they could be any worse than the hornless bastards squatting in your basement.

Your roomie may have been unconventional, but the desperate snatches of campaigning you catch on the way to your door are as traditional as it gets. You snort even as the boos well up from the crowd, now behind you, and quickly slip inside before they get too riled up.

Upstairs, Terezi’s on the phone already – you told yourself you had nothing better to do, after all, even as you ducked into the bathroom and fished your phone out from the pants around your ankles.

“I heard she mixes in soundbytes from her lusus.”

Grimy room to grimy room, and a loose paper sticks to your foot as you scoot backwards to your bed.

“Oh my god, it’s like. Glubcore.”

You peer through your window, past the figurines simpering on the ledge. There’s a fight breaking out on the street.

“Come on though, you need to stop hanging with Megido. You’re starting to sound like her little conspiracy club! Even for Condy, an actual lusus? That’s a fucking stretch.”

“Whatever Miss Sceptic.”

You groan, spotting a pink limo slowly pull out of the scene below.

“Man, it’s so bad down here. What sort of loser tries to turn a press conference into a rave anyway?”

She barks out a sound, tinny and distorted – a laugh through ten feet of water and your crappy speaker.

“Last time I checked, she wasn’t losing!”

You huff in response, flick your eyes to the scuffle below, phone tucked between your cheek and shoulder. A violet goes down, knocked flat. Nothing beats the view from twenty floors up.

-

Next time she comes over, you drag her out back and enlist her in your war on campaign posters. Terezi takes to moustache scribbling with gusto – she assures you that each one being out of place by at least two inches is intentional, and the height of political satire. You squint at her for a second, and continue blacking the horns down to nubs.

-

"Hey, we should go out somewhere."

Even as you speak, you don't take your eyes off the movement on the other side of the river, the bright lights and scattered trolls. She takes a second to reply.

"What do you call this?"

She elbows your side, finally laying down next to you.

"I call this a tiny uneven basketball court, only five fucking minutes from your place, in a human neighbourhood."

"You got somewhere better?"

Sarcasm or not, you grin and answer her honestly.

"Probably not," and she huffs a little laugh, dulled sounds of the troll sector a nice backdrop, "but I've got a few ideas."

-

You spy her silhouetted against the strobe lights, legs spread, casting capital A for Asshole in a pencil skirt and sweater. There’s tension quaking off her stick-straight frame, and you don’t think she’s ever looked more uncomfortable.

You’re feeling loose though, fucking slick, as you weave a twisted path through the sweaty crowd towards her. Yougrin as you draw close enough to see the dark blotches on the back of her neck, ink spots or constellations or something else you’re slightly too dizzy to identify.

You tap her on the shoulder and ask for a dance. When she smiles, the blue floodlights cancel out the yellow of her teeth, and something tightens like a bowstring in your otherwise languid stance.

You bow as sarcastically as possible, offer her your flesh and bone hand while the wire and metal dig uncomfortably into your other shoulder. You spin her not-so gracefully onto the floor, and the two of you strike up a conversation under the guise of grinding.

She mutters into your shoulder, “I can’t see shit in here,” and you give her a reassuring pat where your good hand was gripping her ass.

“That’s probably for the best,” you reply easily, eyeing off greasy highbloods and the occasional slick-haired human.

“You know I normally love the pungent scent of the losers who forgot to wash behind their gills this morning. But it’s a bit overwhelming all at once!”

She pauses for a moment, sliding down your body, before popping back up with a bright grin.

“And before you ask! Yes Vriska, you are included in the aforementioned unwashed masses.”

“Can you lay off me for like, one second?”

She tips her head and frowns, a picture perfect _who, me?_ and you find yourself scowling.

“Whatever. You gonna be drinking today?”

She hums thoughtfully, scrapes her teeth against your neck for just a second.

“Doubt it. You already been drinking today?”

You turn her around quickly, chest to her back, and she’s trying too hard not to laugh at you. You dig your claws into her waist and pretend you can’t hear her snickering.

“Cut the third degree Pyrope,” and you hope your airy tone translates through the din.

There’s a crashing sound when she turns back around, like someone dropped their drink – the tinkling shatter timing with a flash of strobe as you misstep and theres the crunch, you’ll be picking glass out your shoes for days. She doesn’t let up, laughing and running her hand up from your stomach and grasping at your metal hand and flicking at the frame of your glasses all at once.

“Check your specs Serk! Or maybe watch where you’re going next time.”

Her fingers are slowly tangled in your rat’s nest hair, and you register the steady off beat pulsing of the blue lights, the way it reflects on her glasses.

She seems more comfortable now, looks as relaxed as you feel.

After you kiss her, lazy and sloppy and stupid, she doesn’t look quite so content.

You wonder idly over the bile stained toilet bowl, later, if you’ll ever catch a break.

-

You drag her out almost every day after that, and if she doesn't like it, she doesn't say so.

(At least not out loud - you see her furrowed brow and her nervously fluttering fingers and a deep buried part of you reasons that if you can warm her up to the crowds, you can warm her up to you.)

-

Your ex says you look good together. You say you regret telling her anything.

She’s hunkered low, thin and thoughtful, poise from flick of the wrist to outstretched fingertip as she taps the ash off her cig. You shove her sharply and she falls right off her chair. She laughs, somewhere between dry and melodious, and smoke puffs out from between her fangs.

“It is true though. I never thought I’d see the great troublemaker Vriska Serket looking quite so…domestic.”

You snort, tick your head up and glare pointedly down at the twin punctures in her left wrist, marked points of interest on the long line of each green vein.

“Well who would’ve thought you’d get to be the wild one, Maryam?”

She blushes, mumbling something about _Tit For Tat_ and the bites weaning her off the ciggs weaning her off the bites. You’d dig into the wound, poke fun of her circular logic like you always do, but you’re finally getting wise to when it just isn’t your place.

Instead you puff the hair out of your eyes, and flop down unceremoniously next to her. A little cloud of dust bounces out of the shag. She rests her head on your shoulder.

“The real tragedy,” and her breath is cool on your bicep as she sighs, “is the scarcity of limebloods nowadays.”

-

Your favourite past time is dine and ditching. You wear a ratty suit a size too small and take her by the hand, order the most disgusting thing on the menu in tiny restaurants neither of you could afford. She tells you loudly that she can smell money on the clientele, more glitz than good sense.

Her grin is wicked, her entree is awful, and she wastes no time in dragging you to the bathroom by your dice-patterned tie.

The place hasn't been remodeled in decades, judging by the thick pink shag in the hall and gold scrolling mirror frames. It's undeniably human, but so is half the decor in this city - as far as cultural exchange goes, you guess it could be worse than some ugly carpet and headache inducing light fixtures.

"Why did you bring me in here anyway? All three bites of my dinner are going cold."

She shushes you quickly, grin all teeth as she points out a small window near the ceiling.

"Emergency escape plan."

You lean your elbows back against the probably fake marble counter, wonder if you could clamber up without stepping on the flusher or ripping the seams of your jacket.

"Good thinking. I gotta say Pyrope, I'm impressed! None of this," a sweeping gesture to the both of you, and the window, "seems very _just_ to me. What's gotten into you?"

She's turned in a tight circle, hands fisted in the hem of her shirt, like she's still scouting for more ways out.

"You know," she says thoughtfully, "they used to drag me to places like this all the time. Had to dress up and everything."

The corners of you lips tic down, and you don't try to keep the venom out of your voice when you ask, "You mean the Makaras?"

She turns her head to you and smiles, and it's more warm than mean now.

"Yeah. So how I figure it," she almost trails off as she wanders into one of the stalls, starts unspooling the toilet roll, "is that they need people like us in here."

She comes back out and tosses the length of paper over your shoulders, ties it up like a noose. You arch an eyebrow at her.

"And why's that?"

She wraps some around herself, draped down her sides like a boa, and tells you, "If the regular patrons are half as bad as _them_ , they need someone to class up the joint!"

"Definitely," you nod somberly and fight to keep a straight face as she idly smears hand soap across the mirror for good measure.

You're trying to make out your reflection through the foam when you feel her slick fingers around your wrist. She starts leading you out, lets go carefully when she reaches the hall, and literally shuffles on the carpet until she's right in front of your face. You very suddenly have no clue what you're doing.

The moment draws out longer than it did at the club, and you wish you were as unaware now as you were then - trying to lean in by degrees feels jerky and awkward, but you don't want to stay still, and you definitely don't want to headbutt her. It doesn't matter in the end, when she cranes her neck and presses her lips firmly to yours - doesn't matter when your lips sting, a literal static shock from her friction on the carpet. You not quite gently shove her off you, and she almost loses her balance laughing when your hand shoots up to your mouth.

When her laughter and your cursing both trail off, there's a beat of silence. You clear your throat.

"So."

She looks at you curiously, the ghost of her smile still lingering at the corners of her mouth.

"So?"

"Do you think we can fit through the window?"

She pretends to glance up and check it one more time.

"Definitely not."

She fakes a sudden bout of hyperventilation at your table and quietly sweeps her leftovers into the paper bag they tell her to breathe through. You quickly usher her out to get some air - and by the time the staff realize you took your coats with you, you're both long gone.

-

"I think," she announces grandly, starting to deal, "we may be in hell."

You told her you'd sit this round out, but she's already slotting playing cards into your tangled hair as you reply.

"Right. Hey, how long have you been living out here again?"

"Six months."

"That's the problem. You've gone native."

You flick the cards back, rapid fire, and she ignores it when you land one dangerously close to her left eye. Her friend Rose snickers, and you get the feeling it's more at you than with.

She comes up to you later, under the guise of helping you get drinks.

"If I may offer my unsolicited advice, as your token human friend," she pauses, presumably to give you a chance to decline, although the look on her face says that isn't an option. "I recommend you keep your quadrant angst to youself, and well away from Terezi."

You glare at her over her dirty mugs, and she raises her eyebrows as if begging you to disagree.

"If I may offer unsolicited advice: fuck off."

She lets out a sigh so long suffering you'd think she'd been putting up with your shit her whole life.

"Listen. From one girl to another, I find things are greatly simplified when you just-" a loud peal of laughter from the next room cuts her off, but she smirks like it's proving her point.

"-try not to think too much."

-

You think about when she handcuffed you to your bed and left you there, and you had to tell your roommate forward slash rescuer that you got laid to save face. You think about her neon yellow wardrobe and her creepy fucking eyes and her trail of scumbag exes and you imagine very vividly what it must be like to hate Terezi Pyrope, the way you know you should.

You shove her back against the new campaign posters, try to ignore their thousand yard stares and twenty thousand league grins long enough to appreciate the tongue in your mouth. She reciprocates this time, and when the pricks of her claws are scattering ridges and dash dash dots across your neck, you try to murmur against her lips.

“I hate you?”

It doesn’t sound nearly as convincing as it did in your head. She pulls back smiling, hair catching on the twice tagged brick.

“Bzzzz. Try again.”

-

You're all bombarded within fifty feet of the rec hall.

Everyone you pass waves a pamphlet in your face and a pen under your nose, and you think bitterly that there's no way you would be here if voting was not literally required by law.

Half of the frenzied mob appear to be candidates themselves - it's an open election, and there's always at least one deluded Neighbourhood Watch tyrant from each blood caste willing to throw their hat in the ring. Condy is conspicuously absent, but her groupies are guarding the final gate, blasting their fucking glubcore and blowing party poppers in people's faces.

You and Terezi make it to that point unscathed, but Kanaya's fallen behind, still caught in a quicksand pit of pamphlets and petitions and _I Think We Should Just Hear Them Out Actually_.

You press on, fighting through the mess of pink balloons and verbal harassment - until the word _cull_ slices through the noise, and Terezi stops in her tracks.

You look wildly around the little clump of supporters, try to find the source of the comment before you give up and yell at all of them.

"Culling? What sort of fucking policy is that meant to be? Who the fuck said that?!"

Someone tries to get in your face, and you're trying to decide how many of them you could take when you realize Terezi still hasn't moved.

She's fuming for certain, and doing nothing to conceal her anger - but every time she opens her mouth, nothing comes out, and you can see her hands scrabbling uselessly at her forearms.

Before you can think it through, you've grabbed her by the wrist and started pulling her into the building. She doesn't so much as dig in her heels when you bypass the sign in sheet, and drag her behind the booths. She's started saying something, muttering hoarsely under her breath - from what you can catch, it's almost entirely expressions of disbelief. You're still running on momentum when she slides down against the wall and you do likewise, trying to talk to her, at her, whichever.

The most you can manage is a vague _hey, shut the fuck up!!!!!!!!_ and the jumbled sentiment that this is a very inconsiderate time for her to freak out.

So when she eventually starts to calm down, you sincerely doubt it has anything to do with you. But you're relieved all the same - until you realize, in the decent stretch of silence, that your hand is still running down her face.

She looks at you pointedly and you freeze in place. For an awful moment you think she's mad, that she'll accuse you of trying get fresh with her in public, getting your pale kicks behind a fucking voting booth.

Instead, she grabs your head in her hands, and whispers seriously, "I can taste your aura Vriska. You smell pretty freaked out."

She punctuates it with a look of utmost sympathy.

"You're fucking with me, right?"

She closes her eyes and nods gravely, forcibly bobbing your head up and down in time with hers.

"Yes. Yes I am."

"And that means you're ok, right?"

She nods again, a little shaky, and lets out a shuddering breath.

"Yeah."

You're interrupted when Kanaya pokes her head around the booths, decked out in _I Voted!_ ribbons and a dozen more flyers.

You yank your head out of Terezi's grip, and realize guiltily that you're glad for the intrusion.

-

You remember being at a party, teenagers slung around the room, hanging off every surface. You remember him, filling a gap in the loose circle you had formed on the scuffed floor. You remember he was quiet, and slow moving, and never actually introduced himself – you remember all the connections he namedropped instead.

He talked a lot about culling. Terezi said she didn’t see any good in it and he helpfully reminded her she couldn’t see _fuckin anything, remember,_ popped his lips around a tacked on _babe_.

You remember wanting to punch his lights out, more than once - but most of those parties blur together, and you try not to remember the rest.

-

She taps thoughtfully at her chin, a moment of silence save for the growling thunder and the steady dripping from her still wet hair.

You grimace at the screech as she slides down the porcelain, settling in the bathtub (she had to tell you what it was called, and you told her you would rip it out of the floor yourself if it convinced her to remodel with normal troll fittings. You flexed your arms and she said she'd like to see you try). You step deftly out of your soaking wet jeans, ignoring the bright blue scrape the broken zipper leaves down your thigh and keeping your gaze very carefully fixed on the floor.

“Ok, here's one. I have it on good authority that our dear mayor to be slash aspiring dictator has very high standing amongst the criminal elite!”

The water rolling down the tiny window pane casts streaks of shadow as you set yourself down in the tub, facing her in your t shirt and boxers - vaguely aware of the way her legs sit against yours, x's and o's and one electric point of contact. You pull your eyes back up to her face.

“It’s not a conspiracy theory if everyone and their auspistice already knows it's true.”

“But what if I told you that she not only possesses a lusus,” you open your mouth to retort, but she cuts you off with a swift punch to the arm, “but possesses one so dangerous that her rise to power was inevitable?”

A flash of lightning with a barely delayed roll of thunder, and she can’t help but look delighted at the dramatic punctuation to her claim. You roll your eyes even as something stutters in your chest, ignore the parts of you wanting to slide closer.

"Your turn!"

She sighs in exasperation at your hesitant pause, even as you let yourself slip further into the bathtub, knees knocking with hers.

"Conspiracy club rules Vriska. I show you mine if you show me yours."

"If you're trying to woo me here, you're doing a crappy job."

She raises her eyebrows, but politely doesn't mention your stunt from earlier (showing up at her place in the pouring rain, throwing random shit at her window until she stuck her head out for _no reason, honestly, get off my fucking case!_ ).

"Someone is being really difficult tonight! Ok, easy one. Tell me a ghost story."

You pause, drawing a blank for once. She peels away some stray hairs still plastered to her face, motions for you to get on with it.

"Fine. It's a quiet _day_ on the outskirts of the city. Day as in bright and hot, and harsh, and actually fucking scary, ok?"

She shakes her head, tells you to stop being such a purist and mix it up for once, laughs when you frown.

When her hair moves, you can see the thin line of a scar still running teal and white under her ear, twin to the one on her chest. You think you've got your inspiration.

"The monster is in full view, because it's out in broad daylight. This is an incredibly unsettling fact for the protagonist, who can see all of the monster in all its terror!"

She raises her eyebrows at you, clearly unimpressed.

"But then! The monster suddenly starts morphing, taking on a new and more terrible and clearly visible form! A second head starts sprouting from its chest, a horrible thing studded with more gold than flesh, and a fin framed mouth filled with a thousand gnashing teeth."

She readjusts in the bathtub, her swathe of skin seperating from your calf.

"The protagonist is horrified when the monster begins to grow a _third_ head. Only when it emerges, with sloppily applied facepaint and dull red eyes, does the protagonist realise - the story was a really shitty metaphor all along!"

She scoffs, tilts her head back to address the ceiling.

"Funny stuff Serket."

She stands up carefully, makes her way out of the cramped bathroom. You call out after her.

"I thought so!"

-

Sometimes, neither of you make it home before light.

She comes out with you now, but she won't stay on your side of the river longer than she has to. No matter how she explains it, you can't help but take it personally.

You invite yourself back to hers as often as she does, and at least once you find yourself passed out on a tiny uneven basketball court, only five fucking minutes from her place.

It was fun the first few times, waking up only an hour after you fell asleep and sprinting the broad streets to her hive with your jackets hoisted over your heads. The sunlight reflected a thousandfold off the skyscrapers, and between them and the sun itself you couldn't see shit. She would grab your hand and take you home, joke about the blind leading the blind.

This time you wake up with your hand exposed and burning to the steady buzz of her phone, a ping from Kanaya scrolling the ticker tape; _Since You Insist STOP I Will Refrain From Using The M Word In Reference To The Two Of You STOP Although I Will Admit I Do Not Entirely Understand Your Reasoning STOP_

Your hand starts to blister while she stays sleeping next to you, and you note dully that you're not having very much fun.

-

She tells you one night that she’s suffocating – teen angst personified and too sincere for your liking. You flick a paper triangle through the square of her fingers, over the countertop greasy and flickering with reflected halogen light, and note idly that you’re more comfortable here on the city’s outskirts than shoved face first into its tits. You brush her off, reply easily that you think you’re suffocating in the stench of drug store pervert still lingering around the magazine rack.

“We aren’t meant to live like this you know? All blocked in together.”

You can see the effort it takes her to admit it, and you cough awkwardly.

(She’s starting to sound like your old roommate, who paced around every square foot of floor you owned, casting nervous glances at the rain soaked windows. You asked her, again and again, why she didn’t leave, try a little sea change at the shoreside settlements. “She’d find me,” is all she replied, every time. You got a letter from her, later, while that fucking music was still pumping right outside. You figured she’d taken up your advice. The paper was warped and smudged, and you’d like to think she wrote it by the ocean.)

“Listen Rez, if this has something to do with getting away from him–"

“It doesn’t.”

You raise an eyebrow at her, huff a little before you can help it, and register that as your first mistake.

“Can it Pyrope. What’s your problem anyway?” and that’s two for two, and you imagine a safety net called common sense, fifty feet up with a Vriska shaped hole through it. You continue in a simpering voice, “Does everything you see remind you of him?”

She rings herself up a soft drink and a pack of jerky, pockets the paper football, and leaves you alone.

-

“I get it ok, you’re mad.”

She shoots you a glare through two sets of lenses, smiles slightly at the same time, and you congratulate yourself.

“Really? Please, tell me more.”

You look around, make pleading eye contact with her ceiling spanning Bigfoot poster, and quietly acknowledge that you hadn’t thought that far ahead.

-

You offer her a dartboard adorned with a crudely drawn clown, and she kicks you out.

-

Her Impervious-To-Criticism Condescension holds your gaze through glass and pixels, and you suddenly feel like you’re watching the end of the world compressed on a few square inches of monitor. She thanks the people who made her who she is today, dripping in insincerity. Her victory speech is played over recent press footage, and you almost laugh when you see pictures of her and her entourage on the same strip you and Terezi used to dine and dash on.

The picture changes, and the familiar profile of one of her miserable looking guests is thrown into sharp relief. A young seadweller wrapped up in a tight pink dress. You stop laughing.

Even this speech is filmed in front of your hive block, and you think you finally get it.

-

When you get to work the next night, the place has been cracked open, ripped inside out. Broken glass litters the linoleum, and you can tell the windows were smashed in – like the building sucked its gut in too far, tried to fold in on itself. The register’s open, but the safe isn’t touched. You came in through the back.

It’s only midnight, a quiet night on the outskirts of the city, and your heart is in your throat when you pick up a heavy can and pick your way carefully to the front. You almost slip on a month old magazine, a single page separated from the rest. You leave a dirty boot print on the dead eyed model and press on.

You’re halfway through, stranded in a minefield of scattered glass and potato chips when you spot something darting around in your peripheral. You spend all of a second scanning your mind for the least stupid course of action to take, try to invoke a million years of hard wired survival instincts, try to remember if any of this was in your training video, before you panic and lob the can straight at the intruder.

The wall shakes on impact, and when a rat skitters away from it you feel the most relieved you ever have.

It's only after flicking the lights on that you see the two foot tall writing covering the walls - _cullbait_ in neon pink and green.

Awareness slams into you, and you've got your phone to your ear even as you start the sprint to her hive.

-

She never picks up, and you don't make it all the way to her place - instead you almost miss her, sitting alone on the court. She waves a hand in greeting when you walk over, not turning her face away from the sky. She speaks first, and sounds resigned.

"It's not just the houses is it."

You sit down next to her, feeling worse for the change of pace.

"No, it's not."

She exhales roughly, says "They got half the neighbourhood," like it's just a fact, like it's nothing.

You start telling her that you'll report it, paint over it, that they'll figure out who it was, but she cuts you off.

"That's not the problem. It's there now and it'll be there under paint and I'll always know it."

If she sounded upset, or angry, you might know what to say - but she's just flat, and you don't.

"It's already following me you know? Every time I use sopor, or eat at one of those _stupid_ restaurants. And now it's in my house. In a human borough, where he never even would have stepped foot!"

She smiles a little, and your heart sinks.

"I relied too much on you, you know. Letting you parade me around town and pretend there wasn't a problem. I'm not going to apologize for it though."

She keeps her head tilted stubbornly up and away from you, but inches her hand closer to yours. The headlights of a passing car expose her for just a second, highlight the scar running parallel to her jaw. You meet her in the middle.

You think that's the first time, maybe in your whole life, that you've ever just shut up. And you think, with a hint of satisfaction, that it's probably the best decision you've ever made.

-

You hock most of your furniture before you move out of your place. Your landlord wouldn't be happy, but between the two of you it's enough to buy a shitty two door from the dealership on the other side of the river.

In the end, you don't have nearly as much shit as you thought you would. You spare a thought for your roommate as you drag two bags down twenty stories, spare a glob of spit for the campaign poster still clinging to the brick wall, and you're on your way.

It's pitch black when you get round to pick her up, but the streets aren't empty. She says they've started a neighbourhood watch - Rose waves at you from the pavement, and you think oddly that midnight suits her.

The drive is silent for a while, until you finally pass the city limits.

You ask if she's heard the story of the Unfortunate Stain In The Backseat.

She smiles, and says no, she hasn't.


End file.
